What is Love? I: Are You Still In Love With Matthew Crawley?
by theMatthewReview
Summary: We know she is… We know Sir Richard Carlisle is enough to make the two cousins extremely cautious even if they can't deny what they feel. Previously published in the Matthew Review.


It had been a momentous month even as things were finally being wound down. After months of suffering and resignation, the handsome heir to the Grantham Estate, Matthew Crawley, could stand up once again, and no one deserved to be on the road to recovery more than he. Meanwhile, a savvy, impatient newspaper magnate wanted to cash in on the inroads he had taken into the life of Lady Mary before things depreciated completely between himself and her….

Sir Richard Carlisle was nothing if not shrewd and businesslike. Even his present engagement to the formidable beauty who kept putting off a wedding date had come about in terms of a legal contract. There was no love lost between the two of them, but he could even have lived with in the circles he could just taste being in as soon as he had claimed his prize. Except for that one nagging suspicion that had led him to strongly consider selling the estate he had bought for himself and Lady Mary, to try to bribe her lady's maid into espionage upon her, and to bring a now-all-too-cooperative Miss Lavinia Swire back into Matthew's life: a strong bond between the two cousins that often looked to Carlisle more like a star-crossed romance than devoted family ties…

It was a rare thing to marry for love in the upper classes; Sir Richard heard of the foibles of the ill-matched aristocracy all the time. Besides, Lord and Lady Grantham had grown to love each other after they had spoken their vows, and even the big-hearted Matthew had decided to tie the knot Lavinia after all more for honour's sake than anything else. But — confound it — he was a self-made man, newly rich, and he had worked hard to earn every privilege life had to offer him. Surely if Lady Mary Crawley was to marry him, keeping up appearances in order to hide dark secrets was not an option. And if she still carried a torch for the charming country solicitor who had once been her beau, too bad, let her suffer for it, so long as the two of them were kept apart!

****

INDIGESTIBLE BITTERS AFTER DINNER: _the hour for lies and him__  
_

Poor Mary had begun to realise that she had gotten the worse part of the bargain she had made with her increasingly difficult fiancé before this uncomfortable moment in the drawing room. Sir Richard was pressuring her once again to commit to a given time by which to fulfill their frankly loveless agreement. With not a whit of eagerness to marry him, she had uttered 'July', merely for the sake of being gone from the estate in August. Who knew, maybe things might have lightened up by then. Right now, she was rather hurt by Sir Richard's lack of trust in her, though it was not quite yet the straw that broke the camel's back.

It was then that Matthew, like a spring zephyr through an open window, wheeled himself into the drawing room rather than being pushed in his chair, to the delight of almost everyone present: 'Ah! There he is.' Even Sir Richard took notice, as Mary dared a smile at her cousin. But while everyone else was quite drawn to the young man's demonstration of how he could now pull himself up onto his feet, Mary dared bring something out into the open between herself and her fiancé even as she, too, watched Matthew.

'Why did you bribe Anna?'

She would learn why only moments later, when asked a question that put her on the spot in turn:

'All right, I will say it. Are you still in love with Matthew Crawley?'

Her answer came as readily as if it had been rehearsed, though if one had had her confidence in another setting, they would have heard a valid summation of her feelings about her present interrogator.

'Of course not! Do you think I could be in love with someone who preferred someone else over me?'

And she walked away, towards her family, of which someone she wanted to protect was part, leaving the one who was pushing in from outside to fend for himself.

**IN THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING**: _the hour for truth and her_

The light of a pale full moon through the space between the curtains was not what kept Mary awake after she had been startled awake by a strange twist in a dream. She was troubled by something else, as surely as Carlisle had nagged her earlier….

… the depth of regard in a certain someone's limpid gaze, a light that he could not douse when his eyes met hers.

… the ease and rapport she shared with that certain someone, things that were altogether missing whenever she spoke to Sir Richard.

… the little thrill she felt at the sound of his voice, a bigger one when he was near enough to touch…

But certainly not anything she felt when the man she was supposed to marry was near. She was never comfortable around Sir Richard now; it was like a disembodied being dealt with the man, and not the true Mary. This disembodied being, that might as well have died when she and Matthew had tearfully broken things off, had spoken both the truth and a lie. And now the true Mary, the one who had wept over her true love's attempt to move on and marry another, had come to herself. Sir Richard preferred himself, his ambitions and his view of the world to her. That was true. And because she did not love this man who put his own designs onto everything he owned, and felt he now owned her, she had protested "too much", with her practised, straight face set so well that it betrayed nothing…

The moonlight hit her pillows; she hugged one as she lay on her side, and she sighed:

If the blushing and smiling meant anything, if the nearness made her heart skip a beat, if she could have nestled into his shoulder very easily at any time as they sat upon the bench beneath the tree, if she felt he plumbed the depths of her soul and truly cared about what was best for her and she thrived on knowing he cared so much, and if she had often relived a few tender kisses shared before the war….

If she longed for him now, if she wished he would be the one asleep beside her, as radiant as Phoebus Apollo - never mind a mere Perseus! - but beautifully real, and warm, and strong… so considerate of her, so gentle, let alone if she yearned for his touch because he was all those things and more….

… then, yes, she _was_ in love with Matthew. And she was scared. If Carlisle could detect this even when both had been denying it to themselves, anything might set him off. She would have to be cold, and careful, for a long, long time. But in the silence of the night, she could sigh over Matthew, cry over losing him, love him all she wished to, so long as she were by herself.

"Ah, aren't we all stuck with the choices we make?" she relived something she had blurted out to him.

Then tears came, wet and prone to spreading, and she wished she could cry, not even in front of Anna, but in the arms of her best friend, her cousin…

'I love you, Matthew,' Mary whispered into the silence of the hour. 'And I'm so very sorry….' _

*two of the headings come from a poem in 'A Shropshire Lad'.


End file.
